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in her a story-teller of profuse imagination with a gift of ingenious and
rollicking fantasy ." It praises
The Salzburg Tales
for their "wide
curiosity," "emotional detachment, " and "artistry. " It commends a
story describing "a prep6sterous colony of artists" and also the bank–
er's tale of sensitive goldfish "which foretold movements in the stock
market by changes of color." But with
Seven Poor Men of Sydney
the
T.L.S.
tells us that "Miss Stead's taste for realism has little of the
liveliness and spontaneity of her sense of fantasy. " "The clash of ideas
and personality among the little group lends itself to some brilliant
passages of argument" and Stead shows "a fine practical intelligence in
matters of political philosophy, " but the whole is "lacking in coher–
ence." A year and a half later the
TL.S.
reviews
The Beauties and
Furies
in which "Miss Stead has tried to do something to which her
talents are not suited." Rejecting fantasy or intellectual analysis, she
now attempts "a novel of characterization." Elvira Western runs away
from her dull husband to live in Paris with the " preposterous" poet
Oliver. Every person in the book is "pasteboard." "Miss Stead has not
the human sympathies of the more conventional novelist." With its
review of
House of All Nations
in
1938,
the
TL.S.
admits that today
"Salzburg itself is not quite what it was." But Christina Stead still
hasn't the ability to create "character in the round. " Her "panoramic
study of international finance" is "impressive and queer" but " undi–
luted and repetitive."
The Man Who Loved Children
(1940) is even
"more disappointing." It is a "wild and whirling American extrava–
ganza," an "arbitrary and elaborately unlifelike chronicle" of "mon–
strosities." Finally,
For Love Alone
(1944) is a complete failure and
Letty Fox: Her Luck
( 1946)
is "wearisome and lifeless. " This chronicle
of the
T.L.S.'s
disenchantment with Stead's career has an ironic happy
ending: when Christina Stead settled in England in the fifties she
became a book reviewer for the
TL.S.
The
TL.S.
hardly mentions Stead's devastating ear for language,
an ear which has been turned not to the mythopoeic, but to modern
life.
House of All Nations
(1938),
which
Time
called "one of the most
savage satires on the principle of money," was the result of her five
years in the Paris bank, on which she comments in the interview:
Q.
"But a lot of people do believe that the economics of
House of All
Nations
are quite staggering." A. "They should be! Those boys told me
everything! People always tell a writer everything, especially in busi–
ness, because they think the poor romantic soul won 't really under–
stand that sort of thing." Stead's originality of language is most
pronounced in her untrammeled, exuberant dialogue. She creates and
defines character and milieu by magnifying qualities of speech. Here,
